The England evoked in the Lettres persanes was a nation that, in 1721, Montesquieu had encountered only on the page. There was however a limit to what he could learn about the country through studying the works of English Enlightenment authors and reading anglophile Huguenot periodicals. In 1728, therefore, Montesquieu set out to view the nation at first hand. England was the final destination on his Grand Tour of Europe (1728–31) which took him to Austria, Hungary, Italy, Germany and Holland, concluding with an eighteen-month stay in London (1729–31). In Paris in 1727 he had met Lord Waldegrave, a high-ranking English diplomat posted at the embassy there. When Walde-grave was instructed to visit the Imperial court in Vienna in 1728 Montesquieu accompanied him, beginning his Grand Tour in an English ambassador's train. Montesquieu's membership of the Club de l'Entresol, an English-style club that met in a Parisian basement (entresol) from 1724–31, had also brought him into contact with exiled Jacobites Andrew Ramsay and Viscount Bolingbroke, who were fellow members. Bolingbroke returned to England in 1725, becoming a prominent figure in the so-called ‘Patriot’ opposition to Robert Walpole's premiership. Montesquieu's visit to London coincided with fierce debates between Walpole and Bolingbroke regarding recent French attempts to refortify Dunkirk when the Treaty of Utrecht had stated that the harbour must remain unfortified. This signalled the deterioration in relations between England and France that would culminate in the dissolution of the Anglo–French alliance in 1731.

Montesquieu recorded his experiences as a traveller in his travel journals, or Voyages en Europe. These notebooks remained unpublished in Montesquieu's lifetime, and have only recently been acknowledged as an integral part of the author's work, worthy of investigation in their own right. Despite their fragmentary state, the Voyages are a remarkable illustration of their author's varied interests, containing information on an eclectic assortment of topics from mining techniques to the intricacies of pan-European diplomacy.